Sunday, August 23, 2009

After the 1st 2 days of the CAT Ladies, a showdown was brewing between golfers who have been having a fantastic 2009 (Shinobu Moromizato and Eun-A Lim at -6, Sakura Yokomine at -5) and those in need of a spark to get as hot as they had been in 2008 (Miho Koga at -7, Akiko Fukushima at -6, Esther Lee at -5, Ji-Hee Lee at -4). And from the very 1st hole, most everyone in the hunt rose to the occasion.

It started with an eagle on the 1st hole, a 470-yard par 5, by Moromizato, who was playing with Yokomine and Lee in the penultimate group. She followed it up with birdies on the 2nd and 4th to get to -10 for the tournament. But Fukushima, who birdied her 1st 5 holes yesterday, birdied 5 of her 1st 6 to pass her at -11. Her playing partner Koga could only manage 1 birdie in that stretch, while Lim squandered her own opening eagle with a bogey on the 6th. At that point, the leaderboard looked like this:

Fukushima -11Moromizato -10Koga -8Lim -7

But they were soon joined by 3 players in earlier groups who were really tearing up the course. After Fukushima settled for a 31 on the front with a bogey-birdie-par finish, and Moromizato and Koga converged on -9 with a bogey and a birdie, respectively, a 30 by Mayu Hattori, 3 birdies in her 1st 10 holes by Yukari Baba, and 3 birdies in her 1st 11 holes by Ji-Hee Lee brought them into the hunt at -7. As the lead group played the 12th, the leaderboard looked like this:

Fukushima -10 (after a bogey on 11)Moromizato and Koga -9 (after Koga went birdie-bogey to start the back)Hattori, Baba, and Lee -7 (after a double on 10 dropped Lim out of the lead pack)

Lim bounced back with back-to-back birdies on the 12th and 13th to return to -7, but since every one of the leaders but Hattori birdied the 484-yard par-5 13th, it didn't help her out all that much, especially when Moromizato birdied the 548-yard par-5 15th to join Fukushima at -11. A bogey on the 14th dropped Baba back to -7, and even 2 birdies down the stretch weren't enough to catch the leading trio. 3 birdies in her last 6 holes pulled Sakura Yokomine to -8, where she was joined by Hattori (whose birdie on 17 broke an 8-hole par train and helped her finish with a bogey-free 66, the best round of the tournament) and Ji-Hee Lee (whose bogey on the 17th dropped her out of contention).

So in the end it came down to the 3 players who got to double digits under par. Moromizato finished with 3 straight pars for a 68 that put her at -11, and then she had to wait and see what Fukushima and Koga would do. Fukushima's bogey on 17 dropped her to -10 with Koga, who ended up parring her last 5 holes for her 2nd-straight 70 that left her 1 short of Moromizato. And a Fukushima bogey on 18 forced her to settled for her 3rd-straight 70 that left her tied with Baba for 3rd. Moromizato became the 1st player on the JLPGA to win 4 times in 2009.

3 comments:

Where in the world do you get all this current info.? Perhaps I'm just to old for all this latest tech stuff. I'm still trying to translate Japanese. Now that you have enlightened me about Shinobu Moromizato I can't locate photos of the JLPGA ladies playing in Japan. Whoa is me, LOL :~)

My hitchhiker's guide to the JLPGA in the left sidebar is a good place to start. I need to update it a bit, but it's basically accurate.

They make realtime scoring available in English and you can click on players' names for profiles that have some English in them. But the reason I do what I do is because not enough is available in English there or anywhere else.